Official LTTC Answer

London Teacher Training College (LTTC)

Answered on: 29 April 2026

Honestly, being a non‑native speaker doesn’t put you at a disadvantage when teaching pronunciation. In some ways, it actually helps. You’ve gone through the same struggles your students are facing, so you can explain things in a way native speakers often can’t.

What’s made the biggest difference for me is training my listening first. If you can hear the difference between sounds, stress patterns, and intonation, you’re already halfway there. I spent a lot of time with minimal pairs, shadowing short clips, and listening to how stress changes meaning. It really sharpened my ear.

Another thing that helped was shifting my focus away from “perfect sounds” and more toward the bigger picture—word stress, sentence stress, rhythm, linking, reductions. Students usually become more understandable when they get the music of English right, even if a few individual sounds aren’t perfect.

And don’t feel like you need to be the pronunciation model all the time. I use audio from dictionaries, YouGlish, short clips—whatever gives students a clear example. My job is to guide them through what to notice, not to sound like a BBC announcer.

One more thing: be open with your students. I’ve found it really powerful to say, “I had trouble with this sound too, here’s what helped me.” It makes the whole process feel more achievable for them.

In short: keep improving your own pronunciation, but don’t obsess over sounding native. Focus on clarity, confidence, and helping students understand the system. That’s what really matters.